With a ton of hype surrounding the build-up Nokia Connection in Singapore 2011 got underway only a few minutes after the scheduled date. Starting with a view statistics on the significance of the South-East Asia and Pacific region both in terms of population but in terms of market penetration of mobile devices. After this brief interview and few relatively old statements on the support of Symbian to 2016 and the newer moves to Windows Phone ecosystem. Nothing new here.

This was then followed up by a painful demo of Symbian Anna, supposedly coming in August. (Lolwut!?! :P). After this astounding demo, Nokia moved on to present a few new S40 devices, the X1-01, C2-03 touch and type dual sim slider. While not particularly exciting in and of itself, the announcement of Maps for the S40 platform was certainly the key takeaway from Mary McDowell’s presentation. This mapping solution is somewhat like Skyhook in that it doesn’t utilise GPS but instead uses cell tower triangulation in order to determine location.

After Mary’s presentation, Marco Argenti, Senior Vice President of Developer and Marketplace relations. Again, there was painfully little information available here but the key takeaway is that Qt support will eventually be making it’s way to the S40 platform in the very near future.

Elop hit the stage soon after to introduce Marco Ahtisaari the Senior Vice President of Design at Nokia.

He cut to the chase immediately, introducing the N9 hardware and some of the software from the curved glass screen to the multitasking user interface.

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There’s so much to talk about here. The entire device is practically assembled and put into a single piece of coloured polycarbonate. High def video, stereo audio capture, 16:9 aspect ratio 8 megapixel sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and autofocus of course all made the cut. The user interface can’t really be explained properly, at least in words, but fluid as greased lightning is the closest approximation. Check some photos below or simply head to the following link for more information.

Elop subsequently concluded the event with little fanfare, but I honestly believe, as mentioned earlier that this device is simply a hint at Nokia’s potential in not just in manufacturing and engineering but in holistic design. Much like concept cars give buyers a better impression of their manufacturers, so too does the N9 serve to better Nokia’s image.

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“Nokia N9 Devkit To aid the speedy development of apps for the Nokia N9 smartphone, Nokia has produced a limited number of developer phones, the Nokia N950 phone. This phone isn’t available for purchase and can only be obtained through selected developer programs, such as Nokia Developer LaunchPad.”

can it play 1080p video? No gyroscope? Battery still 1200mah? So many questions….

Rashed

still…. Nokia N9 is the most beautiful device i have ever seen with the best UI on a mobile device. Period.

richard

where’s the front camera? No usb otg? It should be n7. N8 has greater features.

Webby

I’m only half in love with the N9.
No flash support??? Really???
Micro SIM? Are they fucking serious?! No Micro SD card?

These are potential deal breakers.

Can you arrange apps in folders to take away some of the pain on no traditional homescreen?
USB OTG?
HDMI?
What do I do when the phone freezes in an app or something and there’s no home button to crazily press to save the day?

Though having said that, there are a hell of a lot of positives to take too. It’s absolutely beautiful for a start…

despisethesun

No FM Transmitter either, by the looks of it, which is almost (but not quite) a dealbreaker for me by itself, but when combined with all the other stuff this thing is missing, I’m probably going to take a pass. It’s missing so much in the way of hardware features that it seems like a MASSIVE step back from my N900, and doesn’t even measure up in a lot of ways to the N8. This was Nokia’s last chance to keep me as a customer, and while I don’t want to say they blew it before this is released, I’m pretty confident my next phone will be an Android. It’s a shame, as the OS looks very nice, but the way Nokia used to include everything plus the kitchen sink was a big selling point for me, and that’s gone.

goosepig

I agree, spot on. They have left out a lot of key features (FM transmit being a main one for me). All in the sake of good design, which is great, but perhaps they have swung over too far.

Qt on S40 is great news and will surely also help with Symbian before it dies and MeeGo going forward. Developers would have to be a little nuts to ignore it now with the kind of reach S40 can offer.

richard

How can i switch sim cards here? Not expandable only internal memory? Hdmi cable? N9-01 please… I need all the misshng features. I thought it wil be full featured.n9 still need to compete with n8. Now i need to wait for nokia wp mango… But i hate the wp ui though it has good ux i think.

richard

How can i switch sim cards here? Not expandable only internal memory? Hdmi cable? 3 homescreen only? N9-01 please… I need all the misshng features. I thought it wil be full featured.n9 still need to compete with n8. Now i need to wait for nokia wp mango… But i hate the wp ui though it has good ux i think.

paagen

wine wine wine..

Nokia has built a fantastic phone and all you do is complain.

What no built in projector? No optical zoom? No display port? No kinetic recharging of battery? And NO ESPRESSO machine?

What kind of feature phone is this?

hihihihhaha

Nokia strikes back! Bye bye Android.

Doug

I’m sorry but I was expecting something very close to the works with this phone. It seems to me that all they’ve tried to design in this is an iPhone, and if you’re going to do that, you damn well better outshine it in hardware, and this doesn’t even do that. No expandable memory? No HDMI? No qHD display? Is there even a front facing camera on this at all either? I can’t find one. The camera button is in the worst spot too. Yeah the phone looks cool, and the UI looks pretty slick in this animated videos, but aside from 64 GB of memory and NFC, this really is pretty pathetic for a phone that needs to compete more with high end Android’s than Apple.